Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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67 past books matching True Crime
A single gunshot in Memphis ignites a search that spans continents and fractures a nation already on edge.
Hellhound On His Trail
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
A single gunshot in Memphis ignites a search that spans continents and fractures a nation already on edge. In Hellhound On His Trail, Hampton Sides traces the parallel paths of Martin Luther King Jr. and his assassin, James Earl Ray, as investigators launch a relentless sixty-five day manhunt. The result is a gripping work of narrative nonfiction that captures grief, tension, and the scale of history in motion.
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel. The nation was shocked, enraged, and saddened. As chaos erupted across the country and mourners gathered at King's funeral, investigators launched a sixty-five day search for King’s assassin that would lead them across two continents—from the author of Blood and Thunder and Ghost Soldiers.
With a blistering, cross-cutting narrative that draws on a wealth of dramatic unpublished documents, Hampton Sides, bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers, delivers a non-fiction thriller in the tradition of William Manchester's The Death of a President and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. With Hellhound On His Trail, Sides shines a light on the largest manhunt in American history and brings it to life for all to see.
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A closed case refuses to stay buried as questions linger beneath a killer’s confession.
The Ultimate Evil
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
A closed case refuses to stay buried as questions linger beneath a killer’s confession. In The Ultimate Evil, journalist Maury Terry reexamines the Son of Sam murders, tracing inconsistencies and overlooked evidence that suggest a wider conspiracy. Blending investigative reporting with true crime analysis, this unsettling account explores the possibility of cult involvement and the long shadow cast by violence.
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THE TRUE CRIME CULT CLASSIC: Follow journalist Maury Terry’s decades-long investigation into the terrifying truth behind the murders of serial killer Son of Sam.
Inspired the Netflix docuseries The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness!
On August 10, 1977, the NYPD arrested David Berkowitz for the Son of Sam murders that had terrorized New York City for over a year. Berkowitz confessed to shooting sixteen people and killing six with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, and the case was officially closed.
Journalist Maury Terry was suspicious of Berkowitz’s confession. Spurred by conflicting witness descriptions of the killer and clues overlooked in the investigation, Terry was convinced Berkowitz didn’t act alone. Meticulously gathering evidence for a decade, he released his findings in the first edition of The Ultimate Evil. Based upon the evidence he had uncovered, Terry theorized that the Son of Sam attacks were masterminded by a Yonkers-based cult that was responsible for other ritual murders across the country.
After Terry’s death in 2015, documentary filmmaker Josh Zeman (Cropsey, The Killing Season, Murder Mountain) was given access to Terry’s files, which form the basis of his docuseries with Netflix and a companion podcast. Taken together with The Ultimate Evil, which includes a new introduction by Zeman, these works reveal the stunning intersections of power, wealth, privilege, and evil in America—from the Summer of Sam until today.
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A city builds a monument to progress while a killer builds a monument to death.
The Devil in the White City
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
A city builds a monument to progress while a killer builds a monument to death. In The Devil in the White City, architect Daniel Burnham races to create the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair as Henry H. Holmes constructs a hotel designed for murder. This narrative nonfiction work interweaves ambition and atrocity, revealing how spectacle and violence coexisted at the dawn of modern America.
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#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile comes the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the cunning serial killer who used the magic and majesty of the fair to lure his victims to their death.
“As absorbing a piece of popular history as one will ever hope to find.” —San Francisco Chronicle
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century • A Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of the Last 30 Years
Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.
Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair’s brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country’s most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his “World’s Fair Hotel” just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium.
Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.
The Devil in the White City draws the reader into the enchantment of the Guilded Age, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. Erik Larson’s gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.
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For readers who want true crime focused on poisonings, family history, and criminal psychology.
Preacher’s Girl
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Called an “excellent true-crime study” by Publishers Weekly, Preacher’s Girl examines the life and crimes of Blanche Taylor Moore, whose husbands and previous boyfriend suffered symptoms later tied to arsenic poisoning. Jim Schutze traces the investigation, victims, and questions around Moore’s motives, with a 4.5-star rating from more than 400 Amazon reviewers. For readers who want true crime focused on poisonings, family history, and criminal psychology.
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An "excellent true-crime study" of a female serial killer given the death penalty for poisoning at least three men between 1973 and 1989 (Publishers Weekly).
Widowed Blanche Taylor Moore was about to lose her second spouse to symptoms that mysteriously mirrored those that killed her first husband—as well as her previous boyfriend. When an investigation reveals arsenic poisoning, the hideous truth about the wife and mother comes to light. Did the abuse Blanche suffered as a child at the hands of her alcoholic father turn her into a murderer she became?
In this riveting true crime account, critically acclaimed journalist Jim Schutze explores the harrowing motivation and chilling details of the lives, loves, and victims of North Carolina's oldest living inmate on death row.
"Involving . . . chronicle of the murderous career of a Bible Belt Borgia." —Kirkus Reviews
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He appeared friendly, dependable, and ordinary, which made the violence harder to see.
To Kill and Kill Again
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
He appeared friendly, dependable, and ordinary, which made the violence harder to see. In To Kill and Kill Again, the story of Wayne Nance traces a twelve-year killing spree that terrorized Missoula while he hid in plain sight. This true crime account examines manipulation, missed warning signs, and the investigation that finally exposed a predator who nearly escaped justice.
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The twelve-year rampage of "Missoula Mauler" Wayne Nance—and the shocking end to his murder spree
To his neighbors, Wayne Nance, a furniture mover from Missoula, Montana, appeared to be an affable, considerate, and trustworthy guy. No one knew that Nance was the "Missoula Mauler," a psychopath responsible for a series of sadistic sex slayings that rocked the idyllic town between 1974 and 1986.
Nance's only requirement for murder was accessibility—a preacher's wife, a teenage runaway, a female acquaintance, a married couple. Putting on a friendly façade, he could easily gain his victims' trust. Then, one September night, thirty-year-old Nance pushed his luck, preying on a couple who lived to tell the tale.
A true story with an incredible twist, written by former Wall Street Journal editor John Coston and complete with photos, To Kill and Kill Again reveals the disturbing compulsions of a charming serial killer who fooled everyone he knew, stumped the authorities, terrified a community, and nearly got away with it.
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Deviant revisits the quiet Wisconsin farm where ordinary appearances concealed a decade of horror.
Deviant
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Deviant revisits the quiet Wisconsin farm where ordinary appearances concealed a decade of horror. Harold Schechter traces Ed Gein’s life, crimes, and the warped fantasies that reshaped American true crime history. Moving beyond myth and movie legend, this account examines the psychology, isolation, and cultural aftermath of a killer whose violence still unsettles the national imagination.
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From the author of “top-drawer true crime” (Booklist) books comes the definitive account of Ed Gein—the man whose shocking crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.
The year was 1957. To his Wisconsin neighbors, Ed Gein was a slight, Midwestern farmhand with a twisted little smile. To an unsuspecting nation, he would become one of the most notorious crime figures in history, having lived for ten years in his own secret world of brutal murder and unthinkable depravity.
Here is the grisly true story of “the Butcher of Plainfield,” a deranged killer whose fiendish fantasies inspired such works as Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. More horrifying than any movie or novel however, Deviant dares to explore in chilling detail the life and times of one of the most twisted madmen in the annals of true crime—one who still haunts us to this day—and how he transformed his small, nondescript farmhouse in the American heartland into his own private and inescapable domain of ghoulishness and blood.
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Above the Ground opens with a wrongful conviction set against the violence and secrecy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Above the Ground
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Above the Ground opens with a wrongful conviction set against the violence and secrecy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Dragged into a murder he did not commit, Kevin Barry Artt becomes trapped in a system shaped by political pressure and buried truths. Through legal battles and historical exposure, this nonfiction account examines injustice, state power, and the human cost of conflict.
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"The fascinating true story of [Kevin Barry] Artt . . . and how his life was pummeled and turned upside down by being dragged unjustly into 'the Troubles.'" —Los Angeles Daily Journal
The account of a man convicted for a murder that he did not commit, Above the Ground: A True Story of the Troubles in Northern Ireland takes readers through one of the darkest periods in Northern Ireland's history, highlighting themes of injustice, perseverance, and hope through Kevin Barry Artt's escape and struggle.
In this deep and exposing novel, readers are shown for the first time, the true story of the murder of British prison official Albert Miles by Irish Republican Army assassins and the best efforts of former IRA men and the British government to keep hidden the secrets of their dirty war during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. No matter where you stand regarding the bloody conflict, Above the Ground will have you turning the pages to keep revealing the truth. Filled with courtroom drama and true crime, you will not want to put this new release down!
"Lawton's account, honed by years on Kevin Barry Artt's legal team, brings an advocate's insight and dedication to exposing injustice. A must-read for anyone interested in Irish history, true crime, or courtroom drama." —The Irish Echo
"A startling, memorable forensic analysis and account of British rule in Ireland." —Seamus Deane, Irish historian and writer
"One of the best books ever written by an American about Northern Ireland and a must-read for those interested in promoting peace." —Nancy Soderberg, former deputy assistant to President Clinton for national security affairs and author of The Superpower Myth
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A public image of devotion collapses with devastating speed.
The Perfect Father
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
A public image of devotion collapses with devastating speed. This true crime account traces the Watts family tragedy, following the disappearance of Shanann Watts and her children and the unraveling of the man who claimed to love them. As the investigation exposes deception beneath curated normalcy, the narrative examines control, violence, and the danger of mistaking appearance for truth in modern family life.
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About the book
In The Perfect Father, New York Times bestselling author John Glatt reveals the tragedy of the Watts family, whose seemingly perfect lives played out on social media—but the truth would lead to a vicious and heartbreaking murder.
In the early morning hours of August 13th, 2018, Shanann Watts was dropped off at home by a colleague after returning from a business trip. It was the last time anyone would see her alive. By the next day, Shanann and her two young daughters, Bella and Celeste, had been reported missing, and her husband, Chris Watts, was appearing on the local news, pleading for his family’s safe return.
But Chris Watts already knew that he would never see his family again. Less than 24 hours after his desperate plea, Watts made a shocking confession to police: he had strangled his pregnant wife to death and smothered their daughters, dumping their bodies at a nearby oil site. Heartbroken friends and neighbors watched in shock as the movie-star handsome, devoted family man they knew was arrested and charged with first degree murder. The mask Chris had presented to the world in his TV interviews and the family’s Facebook accounts was slipping—and what lay beneath was a horrifying image of instability, infidelity, and boiling rage.
In this first major account of the case, bestselling author and journalist John Glatt reveals the truth behind the tragedy and constructs a chilling portrait of one of the most shocking family annihilator cases of the 21st century.
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A sixteen year family feud in rural South Carolina erupts into murder, executions, and lasting devastation.
The Guns of Meeting Street
True Crime
Our take
A sixteen year family feud in rural South Carolina erupts into murder, executions, and lasting devastation. Through interviews and court records, this true crime account traces a cycle of revenge that claimed five lives and altered a community forever. Readers praise its meticulous research and chilling clarity, with 4.6 stars on Amazon and strong critical acclaim.
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An engrossing investigation into the true crime story of a sixteen-year family feud that ended in murder in early twentieth-century South Carolina.
As compelling as fiction, The Guns of Meeting Street reconstructs a series of murders from the early 1940s that rocked rural Edgefield County, South Carolina. Featuring a cast of unlikely antagonists—a prominent store owner, an elementary school teacher, and a law enforcement officer—the acts of revenge resulted in five murders and a trio of executions, including that of the first woman to be electrocuted in South Carolina.
Through interviews with members of the two families involved, T. Felder Dorn probes the longstanding feud between the Logues and the Timmermans to uncover this chilling plot of resentment, revenge, and violence. Dorn's careful research weaves together the oral history of family members affected by the shooting with court transcripts, prisoner confessions, and coroners' reports to produce a truly gripping account of the events.
Although most of the deaths took place between 1940 and 1943, the roots of this tragedy can be traced back to killings that occurred in the Meeting Street community in the 1920s. The story climaxes on January 15, 1943, with the execution, within a single hour, of Sue Stidham Logue, George Logue, and Clarence Bagwell for the murder of Davis Timmerman. Dorn's saga concludes with the 1960 parole and rehabilitation of Joe Frank Logue Jr., the only one of Timmerman's killers to escape capital punishment.
Not for the faint of heart, The Guns of Meeting Street details the circumstances and motivations for the killings, the complexities of the court cases, and the involvement in the proceedings of South Carolina governors Richard Manning Jefferies, Olin D. Johnston, and J. Strom Thurmond.
"If you have any interest in history or true crime, The Guns of Meeting Street is a winner." —Spartanburg Herald Journal
"Dorn's rigorously researched book unfolds in a clear, straightforward style that renders the events all the more disturbing." —The State
"Dorn's extremely impressive book has all the elements—is fascinating in its entirety. And for every reader who loves a good mystery, The Guns of Meeting Street is available to intrigue, inform, incite and excite. It'll never get a chance to gather dust on any bookshelf." —Union (N.J.) Leader
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Using modern investigative techniques and newly discovered documents, a cold case team reexamines how Anne Frank and her family were betrayed.
The Betrayal of Anne Frank
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Using modern investigative techniques and newly discovered documents, a cold case team reexamines how Anne Frank and her family were betrayed. Reconstructing wartime Amsterdam and long-suspected motives, this gripping nonfiction investigation challenges decades of assumptions. A New York Times bestseller with 4.6 stars on Amazon and strong reader engagement on Goodreads.
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About the book
A New York Times Bestseller
Less a mystery unsolved than a secret well kept...
Using new technology, recently discovered documents and sophisticated investigative techniques, an international team—led by an obsessed retired FBI agent—has finally solved the mystery that has haunted generations since World War II: Who betrayed Anne Frank and her family? And why?
Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works—journalism, books, plays and novels—devoted to Anne’s story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years—and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.
With painstaking care, retired FBI agent Vincent Pankoke and a team of indefatigable investigators pored over tens of thousands of pages of documents—some never before seen—and interviewed scores of descendants of people familiar with the Franks. Utilizing methods developed by the FBI, the Cold Case Team painstakingly pieced together the months leading to the infamous arrest—and came to a shocking conclusion.
The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation is the riveting story of their mission. Rosemary Sullivan introduces us to the investigators, explains the behavior of both the captives and their captors and profiles a group of suspects. All the while, she vividly brings to life wartime Amsterdam: a place where no matter how wealthy, educated, or careful you were, you never knew whom you could trust.
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A strong match for readers drawn to true crime memoirs that combine family history, investigation, and personal reckoning.
Raised by a Serial Killer
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Called an “engrossing and absolutely terrifying read” by the San Francisco Chronicle, April Balascio recounts discovering that her father was serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards and her effort to understand the truth while confronting cold cases, unsolved murders, and mysteries from her childhood, with a 4.4-star rating from more than 800 Amazon reviewers. A strong match for readers drawn to true crime memoirs that combine family history, investigation, and personal reckoning.
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About the book
The untold story behind the hit true crime podcast The Clearing, this “engrossing and absolutely terrifying read” (San Francisco Chronicle) traces one daughter’s moving quest to understand the truth about her father, the serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards, while confronting cold cases, unsolved murders, and the haunting mysteries of her larger-than-life childhood.
One evening in 2009, April Balascio was searching online, as she had been every night, for unsolved murders in the towns her family had lived growing up, when she stumbled across the latest investigations into the “Sweetheart Murders” cold case. All at once, the buried memories of her father’s dark history were awakened, and she knew she had to take action. She picked up the phone to call a detective and the rest is infamous true crime history.
In her unflinching memoir, Balascio bravely reveals an astonishing tale of a lifetime of manipulation, unexplained upheavals, and silent fear. Some part of her had always known what her father was capable of, but the full truth of how she came to these revelations is as riveting as it is quietly terrifying. Through searing storytelling, dedicated research, and intimate insight, Raised by a Serial Killer is a gripping, courageous memoir unlike any other.
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When two sisters vanish during a bitter custody battle, their father refuses to stop searching.
The Girls Are Gone
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
When two sisters vanish during a bitter custody battle, their father refuses to stop searching. As the case deepens, a web of deception and adult complicity comes into focus. This unsettling true crime account explores how the truth was hidden in plain sight, earning 4 stars on Amazon and widespread reader discussion.
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About the book
On the evening of April 19, 2013, Samantha and Gianna Rucki disappeared. Two of five children born to David Rucki and Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, the teenage sisters vanished in the midst of their parents’ divorce.
The girls’ father, David Rucki, worked tirelessly with law enforcement to search day and night for his two missing daughters, following every lead while raising three remaining children at home. Their mother, Sandra Grazzini-Rucki, used her newfound freedom to vacation around the world, abandoning her children. And as the investigation intensified, catching the attention of the media, Sandra also disappeared.
The Girls Are Gone is the true story of two sisters who went missing, the father who kept searching, and the adults who conspired to keep the truth hidden.
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